Developments never make fundamentals old, these things are still being taught the way they are in the curriculum in many countries. And it really helps to explain and test the small circuits, as a stepping measure to bring the students at the current technology usages.

While the pull-up transistor in the TTL totem-pole output stage is stronger than RTL's resistive pull-up, the pull-down transistor is typically 40 times stronger that the pull-up. IIRC, a standard TTL output can sink 16 mA but source only 0.4 mA. That's OK if you're driving other TTL gates, since TTL inputs have the same 40:1 asymmetry.

The asymmetry meant that TTL-based designs almost always used active-low drive for LEDs and active-low push-buttons. Nowadays CMOS outputs are generally symmetric, but old-timers like me still prefer active-low if an output needs a lot of current.